XInessa: This isn't about me, it's about you and your career.Travis: Can we not talk about this?Inessa: I'm serious, Travis. There are regulations about fraternization for a reason, and you're breaking them in spirit if not in fact. You're acting like these people are friends.Travis: Who says they aren't?Inessa: 'Friend' implies 'equal'. They aren't your equals and they never can be. We're Imperial soldiers, Travis. The cream of the cream. The tests and the training we've had --Travis: Some of which, I seem to recall, involved tolerance.Inessa: I'm not being intolerant. I'm being realistic. The people in the slums you keep visiting are your inferiors. If they weren't, they wouldn't be poor.Travis: ... I suppose this is slightly better than the girlfriend who tried to convert me to xenosoterism....Inessa: I've arranged for the Commander to talk with you. Be at her office at eighteen hundred hours. It's for your own good, Travis.

Xenosoterism: a set of religions which hold that the alien races were sent to save humanity, if only humanity would be quiet, respectful, and humble enough. They have never really caught on, thanks in part to the tendency of some races to kill and eat humble people.

Also, for the curious: Travis and Inessa are here performing a very important military duty known as 'guarding the doorway'. What's behind the doorway? Nothing much, probably. So why are they guarding it? Because soldiers who ask questions like that end up guarding the stairwell.

Lucas Martino returns from captivity in the SIB more machine than man, stripped of all the features his government could use to identify him. Have the Allies got a scientist, or an SIB imposter and spy? What makes a man himself?